How much older is slightly older? Bringing in something that is only 3 years old means it has to go through the IVA process which is very strict and expensive. Over 10 years old and all it needs to go through is an MoT so minimum alterations would need to be done. Stuff from the US usually has white front and red rear indicators but these have to be changed to amber somehow, but things like headlights are much simpler. For the IVA test they must be changed for units that dip the correct way for the UK, for the MoT you can stick a bit of black tape on them to mask the 'kick' to the right when dipped. Many don't have reflectors incorporated into the rear lights either.

Even older still is much simpler, pre 1964 you can leave the white/red indicators, pre 1980 and you don't have to have rear fog lights (which cars from the US don't have), pre 75 and there's no emissions test just a visual check for smoke (I took a 1958 Studebaker in for test with the 6 cylinder engine only running on 4 cylinders and it still passed!), pre 65 don't need seatbelts, etc.

Along with a friend in France, I've quite a bit of experience with importing cars. Buy them in the States, get them registered here and then move them to France where they get a complete restoration (if they need it). It's cheaper to ship to the UK and the French won't register anything that doesn't have an EU Certificate of Conformity, so register them here and then when they get to France they are already EU registered so fairly straightforward to transfer. We've done the all inclusive route once and, as you say, it costs more but it's easy and quick. We used a guy based near East Midlands Airport who was very good but it took quite a bit more than a week! The stuff that is coming in these days is much older. I've got a 1975 Triumph TR6 and a 1964 Volvo P1800S sitting outside at the moment that I picked up from the docks last week. Triumph has been MoT'd and the papers are in with DVLA at the moment so I should get a tax disc and registration number on Monday or Tuesday. The Volvo is going to France as is. Over the last 4 years or so, there's been everything from a 544 cubic inch show Camaro, assorted '50's Yanks, a few Austin Healey's and a couple of E Types. All good fun.....

What's the explanation of 'this post was deleted by the author using an autoscrub routine'?

No accusations because I don't know what happened there, but if a user is rudely deleting their own posts, thus making the forum less useful for others, would suggest nobody bothers replying to that user again!

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